The story of Le Ballet Comique was the mixture of Old Testament story and mythology already familiar. Fountains, artificial fire and aquatic machines lent their several notes of richness and variety. Important from the point of view of the amateur of the ballet is a comment on the geometrical precision that governed the ballet’s groupings and corps movements: “d’une rectitude qu’ Archimède n’eut pas desavoué.” The true and modern note of form in grouping had been struck, and the standard of exactness set that was to become the backbone of the ballet of later centuries. As the first artistically logical relation of dancing to the sentiment of the whole work had been effected in the “sacred representations” of Italy, so Le Ballet Comique de la Reine seems to have been the first work of the kind to be produced under a modern (which is to say ancient Greek) understanding of the laws of harmony of line.
The performance lasted from ten o’clock in the evening until four in the morning. Estimates of its cost range from six hundred thousand to a million dollars (three to five million francs). Of tournaments, presents and numberless other items of the several days’ celebration the cost is reckoned apart from that of producing Le Ballet Comique. Apart from lavishness, there is interest in the fact that queen and princesses participated. They represented nereids and naiads.
England, meantime, was in nowise ignoring the example of Continental neighbours. Pantomimes she had under the names of “mysteries,” “dumb-shows” and “moralities”—religious, and melodramatic, and variously proportioned mixtures of both. They figure in the history of the English drama, as a source of plots for the early playwright. Though the translation of gesture into word filled a want felt by a part of the people, it subtracted nothing from the popularity of the masque. Henry VIII was its patron, and occasionally took part in it. Elizabeth carried it on. Francis Bacon, with whom love of stage representation was a passion, wrote plots—and dialogue where it was needed. Charles I brought it to a climax of taste and opulence. Inigo Jones—of whose high merits as an artist evidences are extant—designed decorations. Ben Jonson was accustomed to write the book for important productions. A notable work of collaboration of the two, with the addition of Lawes, the musical composer, was a masque presented at Whitehall by the Inns of Court in 1633. The cost is stated as £21,000. Although a ballet was perhaps the principal feature of the production, its composer is not named in the records. England’s failure to credit the original genius may or may not bear some relation to her sterility as a contributor to the dance. With support, both sentimental and material, she has been lavish—in the wake of other nations’ enthusiasms. Of invention she has given nothing of consequence. We therefore turn our attention again to France, where history was busy.
Henry IV was of a happy disposition; the dance in his reign was happy in motive, and healthy in growth. To give time to its practice none was too high in station or serious in mind. Sully, the philosopher, profiting by training given him by the king’s sister, played a part in one of the fêtes. The journal of L’Estoile mentions the production of eighty new ballets during the twenty-one years of the reign.
The nature of Louis XIII was taciturn; an influence that caused the ballet to oscillate between the sombre and the trivial. The monarch himself played “The
Demon of Fire” in La Delivrance de Renault, in 1617. Of Le Ballet de la Merlaison that he produced in 1635, he composed the dance music.